Monday, September 19, 2011

On Licking a Human Skull

I tell you this today — a slight foray into topics broader than food and drink — in order to tell you something tomorrow without miring us in macabre details [edit: it's been told].

Hamlet, Yorick, et al by W.G. Simmonds

While in graduate school, I studied physical anthropology. At the age of 25, I knew more about human osteology — the names of bones, their shapes, their characteristic bumps and markers — than did any of my friends who had chosen a career in medicine. Recent or ancient, intact, disarticulated, or fragmented beyond laymen’s recognition, I learned to identify and analyze human remains.

Of course, there was any number of widely taught techniques for doing so. One quick-and-dirty field trick, though, sticks with me. This isn't something you'd want to do with recent remains, but for older bones, it was a method of revealing which fragments of parietal bones are which. The parietals are two squarish bones forming the arched dome of your skull. Whole, the right and left sides are determined easily at a glace. They fit together like the fingers of two clasped hands. But if the head has been broken or shattered, right from left is not always so obvious.

Unless you lick the skull.

You heard me: lick it.

Pronounced grooves run along the inside of each parietal bone, unmistakable channels that, in life, accommodate vessels on the exterior of the brain. These channels in the bone branch like a shrub; few and thick near the front and lower interior surface, but dividing into more, and more delicate, grooves toward the top and rear of the bone. Alternately, they resemble river tributaries in reverse.

Parietal Bone from Gray's Anatomy

When such fragments are dirty or dusty, those grooves can become indistinct. Some physical and forensic anthropologists — not all, by any means — borrow a move from the archaeology crowd and dab parietal pieces on their moist tongues to reveal obscured details. An archaeologist might do this with, say, a dusty pottery shard to determine its composition.

Now, to be sure, anthropologists don’t slather head bones with drool, working every nook and cranny clean. These are not reliquary fetishists, but you can understand why they don’t put this one in the brochure. The dab of moisture dries quickly, but before it does, the grooves’ size and direction becomes apparent. Couple those details with the curve of the piece and the correct placement becomes apparent.

Did I lick the inside of a man’s skull? Bet your sphenoid I did. Like everyone else who got an A.

Why is this on my mind? Check back tomorrow. It comes round to food again.

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Rowley Who?

I'm a contributor to Whisky Advocate, contributing editor for Distiller magazine, a former board member of the Southern Foodways Alliance, and an erstwhile museum curator. After a life of living in bitterly cold and unspeakably hot places, I'm lucky enough to be working my tail off in southern California. Can't beat that with a stick.

Email me: moonshinearchives (at) gmail (dot) com

My day job is freelance writing for business, government, and academic clients. When I’m not helping others get their stories out, I’m eating and drinking, planning to eat and drink, or, relying on my training as an anthropologist and museum curator to reflect on what I’ve eaten and drunk. I travel whenever I can, visiting distillers, artisan food producers, secondhand bookstores, and farmers’ markets. Sometimes I manage to write about it here.